(C) Iowa Capital Dispatch
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Educators question Iowa’s new school book rules after court blocks enforcement [1]
['Robin Opsahl', 'More From Author', '- January']
Date: 2024-01-04
Rules on enforcement of an Iowa law barring books with sexual content from schools and prohibiting instruction and material related to LGBTQ+ subjects will likely not be clarified until March, Iowa Department of Education staff said Thursday.
Enforcement of the law remains blocked by a federal court. The Iowa Department of Education held meetings Wednesday and Thursday seeking public comment on the department’s posted general accreditation standards related to Senate File 496.
Though enforcement has been temporarily blocked, advocates for Iowa school libraries and other Iowans expressed concerns Thursday about remaining questions on the regulations, as well as the potential disciplinary action for violating those regulations that were set to take effect Jan. 1, 2024.
Iowa Sen. Herman Quirmbach, D-Ames, called for the state Department of Education to pause or halt the rulemaking process. He cited the federal court ruling granting a temporary injunction, calling for the department to suspend the process until decisions are reached in court. Quirmbach said it is unlikely the law will stand and that it would be “a waste of time to proceed” with rulemaking.
“It actually could be well, worse than that — there’s already been substantial confusion and even chaos amongst our librarians, amongst our elementary school teachers, amongst our school boards and administrators as to how to interpret this law and how to implement it,” Quirmbach said Thursday. “To proceed further with rulemaking at this point, would convey the erroneous impression that there is a likelihood that the law would ever go into effect.”
Department of Education officials said that the State Board of Education will likely not choose whether to adopt the proposed rules until the March meeting. The challenged portions of the law will remain unenforceable, regardless of education department rules, until the temporary injunction is lifted or a court rules in favor of the state. Portions of the law not enjoined will become enforceable after the state Board of Education’s approval.
Because of the temporary injunction, school libraries may be able to return books to Iowa school library shelves that were removed over concerns about whether they meet the state’s new “age-appropriate” requirements.
Sam Helmick, an Iowa City librarian and advocate with the Iowa Association of School Libraries, said while the court action was a positive sign, it still leaves many school districts and staff in murky territory for how best to follow the law, and how to make sure books were not being removed unnecessarily.
“I may characterize the profession for a minute: We are a very meticulous and mindful bunch,” Helmick said. “We want to very, very clearly understand what needs to be done. So, the mechanism by which to remove the books was going to take time. The mechanism by which to put them back or determine what to do in limbo, it’s gonna take time.”
The provisions in the law are being challenged in lawsuits brought by American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa and Lambda Legal, as well as by book publisher Penguin Random House and the Iowa State Education Association.
U.S. District Court Judge Stephen Locher granted a temporary injunction last week on the law’s provisions dealing with book removal and the use of LGBTQ+ materials.
One part of the law that was not blocked requires teachers and school staff to inform parents if their child requests to use a different name or pronouns than what they were assigned at birth. The lawsuit also challenges that provision.
The decision came days before the beginning of the law’s enforcement Jan. 1, 2024. Locher, judge for the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Iowa heard arguments from the plaintiffs and the state’s lawyers Dec. 22.
In his ruling, Locher wrote that the law’s language detailing what books cannot be included in school libraries is “incredibly broad and has resulted in the removal of hundreds of books from school libraries, including, among others, nonfiction history books, classic works of fiction, Pulitzer Prize winning contemporary novels, books that regularly appear on Advanced Placement exams, and even books designed to help students avoid being victimized by sexual assault.”
The law does not allow books on school library shelves if they contain written or visual depictions of sex acts.
“The sweeping restrictions in Senate File 496 are unlikely to satisfy the First Amendment under any standard of scrutiny and thus may not be enforced while the case is pending,” Locher wrote in his ruling. “Indeed, the Court has been unable to locate a single case upholding the constitutionality of a school library restriction even remotely similar to Senate File 496.”
Locher also wrote that the provision banning instruction and material relating to gender identity and sexual orientation for K-6 students was misunderstood by both supporters and critics of the law. Because the law bans programs and material related to “gender identity” and “sexual orientation” at large, he said, that would ban material containing both cisgender and transgender people, as well as both same-sex and straight relationships.
“The statute is therefore content-neutral but so wildly overbroad that every school district and elementary school teacher in the State has likely been violating it since the day the school year started,” Locher wrote. “This renders the statute void for vagueness under the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment because the State will have unfettered discretion to decide when to enforce it and against whom, thus making it all but impossible for a reasonable person to know what will and will not lead to punishment.”
Michelle Kruse, a Cedar Rapids teacher librarian, said she expects to see school staff and administrators have conversations in the coming weeks about what the injunction means for returning certain books to school libraries.
“Can they safely, securely, put the book on the shelf?” Kruse said. “What happens if the books were already disposed of? Some librarians started this work last summer, and they might not have kept the books. … I think it’ll take time to figure it out.”
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